1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the fields of data visualization for business intelligence and decision support as it applies preferably (but not solely) to workflow and project management. The invention also relates to the field of graphical user interface design with associated methods for the interactive manipulation and updating of information stored in computer file storage and database systems. The present further invention relates to the field of information management, typically to the management of projects, workflows or processes that can be divided into a plurality of tasks or any informational items having changeable categorical classifications that can be tracked, and more specifically to a method and system for representations of projects, processes or workflows divided into data items having updateable categorical classifications where changes may be updated or visually tracked by means of an electronic graphing system.
2. Description of the Prior Art
As business processes increase in complexity, it becomes necessary to determine systems and methods for managing the associated information. In particular, processes can be divided into a plurality of different tasks or actionable items, each of which have a status that ranges from “un-started” to “completed”. Adding to the complexity of the situation is the need to manage people and other resources and to determine where there are weaknesses and overtaxed resources. Accordingly, it is critically important to manage projects and resources and to optimize the equation to increase performance.
The complex data management challenge is the organizing, prioritizing and real-time communicating of information which is now becoming a growing burden. The complexity of data organization is further complicated when process tasks are fluid, unstructured, collaborative, interdependent and frequently changing. For example there are a number of attempts to provide simple easy-to-use intelligent structures for efficiently managing the following typical types of task data: ad-hoc tasks, namely unstructured work have no easy-to-use personalized organization system, since such system tends to morph into user-created spreadsheet-driven solutions; spreadsheets which become cumbersome for the person maintaining them, as the record sets expand and as processes requires real-time sharing, updating rules or collaboration; e-mails with unstructured follow-up processes which provide an unpredictable workload and, in general causes considerable productivity time losses from focus-switching interruptions; and e-mails which often convert into unstructured follow-up tasks that become cumbersome to track, search and prioritize; project data and risks including planned project tasks, issues and risks frequently change status, content, priority or assignment and which require frequent re-documentation, re-summarizing and re-communicating in PowerPoint presentations, e-mails and text documents.
Traditional schemata for preparing and analyzing workflow utilize the familiar “tree” diagram wherein regional locations are broken into departments, projects, phases and tasks, in downward progression. For example in the prior art, a fictional company may be divided into three region categories. Below the region categories may be the first level “branches” of the tree. Below the departments there may be project categories. On the next level below the departments there may be phase categories 8, which are the same in number as each of the project categories. Tasks may then be shown below for each phase and there may be connectivity between the various levels of the tree.
This traditional organizational chart of the prior art as described above has a number of drawbacks. In the first place, there is a large amount of wasted space on the page. Additionally, while connectivity may be provided, the status of the projects is not available, Perhaps the most important aspect of management, would require a hyperlink of some kind in order to be rendered visible, thereby taking the task to another page, and, at that point, failing to maintain a consistent visual representation of connectivity to the remainder of the tasks, phases, projects, departments and regions. The user must return from the hyperlink, and this added step creates a confusing management tool to the end user. Indeed, one could well imagine a large organization being unable to even represent the entirety of the organization on one page if the traditional organizational chart of the prior art is used, since the wasted space is unavailable.
Known prior art that incorporates the dual function of visualization and drag/drop data update via graphical objects, is that of the system known as a “Gantt Chart”, as utilized in several project management applications, e.g., that known by the name of “Microsoft Project”. A typical “Gantt Chart” shows graphical horizontal “bars” that represent an individual task, where the width of the bar starts and finishes across a range of calendar time shown on the top horizontal axis.
As a task visualization tool, “Gantt Charts” are best used for visualizing the overall structure, overlapping timelines and dependencies of a project plan as a whole. However, the “Gantt Chart” is not practical for the targeted “at-glance” lookup of specific information for a given task, because the graphics are inconveniently spread out. For example, a one hundred and twenty task project over a three month duration prints over twelve pages, in which, moreover, the resulting visual is mostly blank space. Clearly, a visualization mode that is mostly “blank space” and requires the user to scroll across three or more pages, just to look up one piece of information, is highly inefficient and impractical.
Another defect of the “Gantt Chart” is that, while a “Gantt Chart” may be initially setup and visually inspected at the start of a project, once the project is underway, sorting and searching is through associated task tables, and not through “Gantt Charts”, for the quick, day-to-day lookup and updating of task information.
Moreover, as a graphical user interface for drag/drop data updates, the “Gantt Chart” is very limited. For example, in “Microsoft Project”, the user can drag/drop update % completion bars, exact start dates, exact finish dates and predecessor/successor linkages. No other project data can be updated within the current “Gantt Chart” structure purely by drag/drop capability. Hence, additional important project data, e.g., resource name, priority or status, must be updated in tables or in pop-up forms, since such data types are not represented by any equivalent “visual structures” (e.g., task bars or horizontal timelines) within the prior art “Gantt Chart” structure.
Another prior art example that combines task data visualization and drag/drop data updates, is the commonly used design for task objects within a calendar and/or timetable schedule known as a “graphical calendar”. This system allows graphical objects representing tasks or reminders to be drag/dropped for the assignment of day, month and/or daily time slots that have fixed positions.
As a task visualization tool, the graphical calendar is impractical, because it would require searching through several pages to visualize tasks across three or four time periods. Similarly to the “Gantt Chart”, there are wasted blank spaces for all the time or date areas where no tasks have been assigned. Scrolling across several pages to locate a few tasks spread across a few months is not an efficient or practical visualization method. Again, for quick lookup purposes, such information would more quickly be located by searching or sorting through a related task table, rather than the graphical calendars.
Another inconvenience of the graphical calendar as a task visualization tool is that it is impractical to squeeze in one hundred to two hundred or more task objects with a single timeslot on the same day, or even within the same day. The graphical calendar is thus more appropriate for individuals with no more than three or four tasks due in a given timeslot.
As a drag/drop data update tool, the graphical calendar has very limited functionality. The information that is commonly updated for the current known designs for graphical calendars is start/finish times, days, and/or reminder times. Like the “Gantt Chart”, the existing graphical calendar structure does not incorporate visual objects representing data types other than start/finish, so any other task data must be updated within a pop-up form, or a task data table, but not by drag/drop capability.
Still another prior art example that is currently utilized for data visualization, but not for drag/drop data updating, is that of the structure known as a “TreeMap”. “TreeMap” visualization, is described by B. Johnson and B. Schneiderman. in the paper “TreeMaps: A Space-Filling Approach to the Visualization of Hierarchic Information Structures,” Proceedings of 1991 IEEE Visualization Conference, and focuses on avoiding waste of space for trees whose interior nodes function as organizers or containers, mapping the tree into a nested rectangular structure, with the rectangles sized proportionately to the size of the nodes they contain, or other distinguishing principle. The most commonly used embodiment of “TreeMaps” is the grouping of hierarchical stock market data within industry sectors. The sizing and colors of boxes representing stock market trades represent relative market size and other features.
The current state of “TreeMap” technology focuses on visualization alone. There have been no known attempts to popularize a systematic “TreeMap” design methodology that is specifically set up for the purpose of “drag/dropping” or “auto-migration” of tree leaf boxes from one category to another. Several patents have issued allegedly improving on Shneiderman's existing “TreeMap” concept, but such patents have all focused on the sole purpose of visualization of data within mutually exclusive hierarchical groupings.
The prior art “TreeMap” data visualizations do not provide any systematic method of structuring data to enable drag/drop or migration of data from one tree leaf category to another. There is no suggestion in the “TreeMap” to derive rules, systems and methods and business reasons for the successful and systematic application of data migration and drag/dropping within and between areas of data on a “TreeMap”.
The current known state of the art in “TreeMap” systems groups data in mutually exclusive categories, between which there is typically never any migration and correspondingly no teaching of creating a drag/drop human computer interface to perform such re-categorizations of data.
The very configuration of most “TreeMap” preferred embodiments currently in use are also not physically arranged easily to enable the drag/dropping activity of data between areas.
It is believed that the most advanced human computer interface research and designs in the use of “TreeMaps” for data visualization did not provide “drag and drop for data migration across a “TreeMap” as a systematic, known methodology and use of “TreeMaps”. The prior art is focused only on visualization, and interactive manipulation of the “TreeMaps” but only for the provision of zooming, filtering and honing in on more visualization, but not on data updates.
It is therefore clear that proposed improvements on “TreeMaps” is purely focused on visualization and visualization alone as a purpose for TreeMap technology, and not for data manipulation and updating.
Yet another prior art example is to incorporate the dual function of visualization and drag/drop data update, which is typically applied in the area of software and project life cycle management where “drag/dropping” of documents, software code, or tasks is allowed between different nodes of a tree diagram. This may be in the form of “TreeMaps” and corresponding parent/child nodes and elements which are visually organized and structured within the frequently applied graphical “file folders” structure.
The weakness in this prior art method of drag/dropping within a “Tree-Map” is that once again, the visual structure is inconvenient for a large number of tasks that exceed the allotted number of available rows on a normal computer screen and thus would require excessive vertical scrolling or dragging across large areas to move an element from its source folder to the newly assigned destination folder or group.
Still another prior art technique was suggested by the leading Human Computer Interface research group, namely University of Maryland, Human Computer Interaction Laboratory. They reported that they believed that the future of user interfaces was in the direction of larger, information-abundant displays. With such designs, it was suggested that the worrisome flood of information can be turned into a productive river of knowledge. Their experience during the past eight years has been that visual query formulation and visual display of results can be combined with the successful strategies of direct manipulation. Human perceptual skills are quite remarkable and largely underutilized in current information and computing systems. Based on such insight, they developed dynamic queries, “Starfield” displays, “TreeMaps”, “Treebrowsers” Zoomable user interfaces, and a variety of widgets to present, search, browse, filter, and compare rich information spaces. They suggested that there were many visual alternatives but that the basic principle for browsing and searching might be summarized as the “Visual Information Seeking Mantra”: overview first, zoom and filter then details-on-demand. They rediscovered this principle and therefore wrote it down and highlighted it as a continuing reminder. They suggested that if they could design systems with effective visual displays, direct manipulation interfaces, and dynamic queries then users will be able responsibly and confidently to take on even more ambitious tasks
Thus “Overview, Zoom, Filter, Details on Demand” is the “Visual Information Seeking Mantra” utilized by one of the world's leading institutions in “TreeMap” human computer interface research. Nowhere in this methodology is there any suggestion of drag/drop user interface activity for the purpose of data manipulation and direct human changes to the database data through interactive activity.
A system and method of visualizing and updating information in the form of what is known as “task cells” is taught in applicant's aforementioned pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/194,031, filed Jul. 11, 2002, published Jan. 16, 2003 as Publication No. US 2003/0014409 A1, that application claiming priority from provisional application No. 60/304,679, filed Jul. 11, 2001. These “task cells” are geometric shapes which are stacked in a prioritized sequence within a hierarchical grouping of categories and sub-categories on an electronic spreadsheet.
That system and method of visualizing and updating information in the form of “task cells” on an electronic spreadsheet has the distinct advantage that information of all types, in the form of these “task cells” on an electronic spreadsheet can be arranged, sequenced and visually encoded within categorized stacks, in ways that demonstrate patterns, trends, potential bottlenecks and priorities. Such information within these “task cells” on an electronic spreadsheet is also encapsulated so that it can be physically manipulated as objects on the electronic spreadsheet viewed on a computer monitor through either a human-executed or system-auto-executed “drag-drop” mechanism, that repositions and re-stacks a selected task cell into a new category. Following this “drag-drop” mechanism on the front end, a computer system is programmed automatically to update the related back end record data and to “rearrange” the stacks, to position the dragged/dropped task cell icon into its new stack, and to tighten the previous stack to fill the gap of the removed, migrated task cell icon.
The invention in its general form will first be described, and then its implementation in terms of specific embodiments will be detailed with reference to the drawings following hereafter. These embodiments are intended to demonstrate the principle of the invention, and the manner of its implementation. The invention in its broadest sense and more specific forms will then be further described, and defined, in each of the individual claims which conclude this Specification